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Community Grounds Crew Visits Catskill

The ValleyCats and BlueShield of Northeastern New York’s Community Ground Crew Program made a stop at Ricky Cramer Memorial Field in Jefferson Heights, Catskill this past week, to help renovate a field that was in desperate need of an overhaul.

With help from volunteers, we rebuilt home plate and the pitcher’s mound, did some sod work around the infield, graded in new dirt and made sure the baseline dimensions were accurate.

The field is going to be used by Catskill Little League’s Senior Division (Babe Ruth), as well as the Catskill High School baseball team.

“This is the first real construction on the site in over 40 years. We’ve been working non-stop over the past month to get to the point we’re at today,” said Catskill Little League President Ed DuPont.

With the help of other members of the community, the field will also receive new dugouts, a new scoreboard, a roadway sign, and fence-guards will be installed across the outfield.

“This has not been a one-man show. This is a massive project and it took a massive community effort to do this,” DuPont said.

The whole idea behind the ValleyCats and BlueShield of Northeastern New York’s Community Grounds Crew program, is to make sure that the fields of our youth are well maintained and safe for play. We are proud to have been able to help out in Catskill and continue our efforts to be ambassadors for the game of baseball.

We will continue to take renovation applications through September, and encourage any league interested in field maintenance assistance to fill one out and send it to us.

On Friday, the ‘Cats and the Community Grounds Crew will be renovating four more fields, in less than 24-hours. The project is known as the ‘4 in 24′ Extreme Field Renovation, which began last year and was extremely successful.

This year, the ‘4 in 24′ will take place at youth fields located in Cambridge, Coxsackie, South Colonie and Waterford. Pioneer Bank is also supporting these renovation efforts.

For coverage of the ‘4 in 24′, be sure to visit our website, www.tcvalleycats.com, and our Facebook & Twitter pages for updates throughout the day on Friday.

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